A current challenge for network equipment and network service suppliers is testing and evaluating products under realistic network volume and conditions.
Prior art approaches to this challenge include systems made of multiple processors running applications that emulate network conditions. Disadvantageously, a single processor emulating a large number of subscriber processors does not fully emulate in a deterministic manner the actual performance and behavior of multiple processors on a network. In addition, a large test system of multiple processors is expensive making such a test system prohibitively costly as it is scaled to emulate larger networks.
Another prior art approach is packet blasting test equipment. Packet blasting test equipment is able to emulate the volume of network traffic, but is not able to realistically emulate network performance that include such events as TCP segment retransmission and timeouts.
There is a need, therefore, for scalable and affordable network test equipment capable of more realistic emulation of network traffic and volume.